


Proposal

by glorious_spoon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bedside Vigils, Introspection, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e15 To the Night Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 04:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18308294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: The ring feels like a lump of ice in his fist.





	Proposal

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little snippet of angst based on the teaser for tomorrow's episode.

The metal feels like a lump of ice in his fist, the hard curved edges cutting into his palm where he’s gripping too hard. It’s a welcome discomfort, something to keep him grounded in the moment even though that’s one hell of a mixed blessing right now. It’s still better to be here than to be anywhere else, even if every one of Magnus’s slow, dragging breaths feels like his own lungs are being unravelled into bloody twine.

It’s been shoved in the back of his sock drawer for weeks, nestled in its satin cradle in a handsomely fashioned little box. It’s too early; he knows that. Alec knows himself for a reckless idiot at the best of times, but even he knows that much. It’s been less than six months. They’re not at the engagement stage. They’re barely at the living-together stage.

Barely. Magnus and his fucking walk-in closets; after this, Alec will build him one with his own two hands if that’s what it takes.

 _After_ this. Because there will be an after. Magnus is going to wake up. He will. Alec refuses to contemplate any other possibility, and it doesn’t matter that Magnus looks gray and drawn and shockingly young like this, his broad frame somehow shrunken in the blue hospital gown, the beeping monitors and the fluttering pulse in his wrist that Alec can’t stop checking the only sign of life. His rings are gone, and his hands look smaller without them. Fragile with their sharp knuckles, the web of skin and sinew.

None of that matters. Magnus is going to wake up. And maybe then Alec will show him the ring and ask him the question that he’s been keeping behind his teeth, and it doesn’t even matter if Magnus rejects him with the same gentleness that he did that first clumsy request to move in together. It doesn’t even matter if he laughs in Alec’s face, because at least he’ll be awake to do it. Alec will put his heart in Magnus’s hands and let him break it if that’s what he wants to do.

It’s already cracking to pieces anyway.


End file.
